State v. Adams-Bey
| Decision Date | 25 August 2016 |
| Docket Number | Sept. Term, 2015,No. 105,105 |
| Citation | 449 Md. 690,144 A.3d 1200 |
| Parties | State of Maryland v. James Leslie Adams-Bey, Jr. |
| Court | Court of Special Appeals of Maryland |
Cathleen C. Brockmeyer, Assistant Attorney General (Brian E. Frosh, Attorney General of Maryland of Baltimore, MD) on brief for Respondent.
Jeffrey M. Ross, Assistant Public Defender (Paul B. DeWolfe, Public Defender of Maryland of Baltimore, MD) on brief for Respondent.
Ralph S. Tyler, Maggie T. Grace, Melissa M. O'Toole-Loureiro, Venable LLP, Baltimore, MD, brief of Amici Curiae the Clinical Law Program and the Law and Social Work Services Program of the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, and the Maryland Restorative Justice Initiative, Inc. in support of the Respondent.
Barbera, C.J., Greene, Adkins, McDonald, Watts, Hotten, Lynne A. Battaglia (Retired, Specially Assigned), JJ.
The Uniform Postconviction Procedure Act (“UPPA”) gives the circuit court the discretion to reopen a postconviction proceeding if doing so is “in the interests of justice.” Md. Code Ann., Crim. Proc. § 7–104 .1 We granted the State's petition for a writ of certiorari in this case to decide whether that same provision likewise grants the Court of Special Appeals the authority to afford the same relief.2 We conclude easily that it does not. The answer to that particular question, however, does not resolve the matter at hand.
Rather, we must look to another aspect of the UPPA and, further, review once again advisory only instructions given at the time that they were mandated by Article 23 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights. Today, we put to an end finally any question surrounding such instructions and the effect that they have upon an individual's criminal trial. We reaffirm our holding in State v. Waine , 444 Md. 692, 122 A.3d 294 (2015), that structural error results from the giving of advisory only instructions that include expressly or by implication the presumption of innocence and the standard of proof. Such error, upon a proper petition for postconviction relief or motion to reopen a postconviction proceeding, entitles an individual to a new trial. We further hold that the Court of Special Appeals is statutorily authorized to review for an abuse of discretion a circuit court's denial of a motion to reopen and may remand the matter to the circuit court with instruction to award appropriate relief if the circuit court abused that discretion.
Advisory only instructions have a tortured history in this State. They are derived from Article 23, which reads: “In the trial of all criminal cases, the Jury shall be the Judges of Law, as well as of fact, except that the Court may pass upon the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain a conviction.” Based upon that constitutional mandate, we required judges under then-Maryland Rule 756b “[i]n every case in which instructions are given to the jury [to] instruct the jury that they are the judges of the law and that the court's instructions are advisory only.”
In 1980, in Stevenson v. State , 289 Md. 167, 423 A.2d 558 (1980), we were asked to decide whether Article 23 violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court held that Article 23 was constitutional on its face, reasoning that Article 23 limited the jurors' role as judges of the law only with respect to “disputes as to the substantive ‘law of the crime.’ ” Id. at 180, 423 A.2d 558. Although the court's instructions on the law of the crime were advisory, the Court determined that all other instructions on the law were always binding upon the jury. Id. The following year, the Court in Montgomery v. State , 292 Md. 84, 90, 437 A.2d 654 (1981), subscribed to that standard by concluding that the trial court erred in advising the jury that all of the court's instructions were advisory. The Montgomery Court reasoned that, because “certain bedrock characteristics” of a criminal trial, such as the presumption of innocence and the standard of proof, “are not ‘the law of the crime’ ” they are likewise “not advisory.” Id. at 91, 437 A.2d 654.
We were confronted again with a postconviction case concerning advisory only instructions in State v. Adams , 406 Md. 240, 958 A.2d 295 (2008). We reaffirmed the constitutional standard articulated in Stevenson and Montgomery , determined that the standard was not “new law,” and, consequently, concluded that a criminal defendant who had failed to object to the advisory only instruction at trial waived the right to assert it as a ground for postconviction relief. Id. at 256–61, 958 A.2d 295.
In 2012, we decided Unger v. State , 427 Md. 383, 48 A.3d 242 (2012). We held that our precedent was clearly wrong in concluding that the Stevenson interpretation of Article 23 was not a new constitutional standard. Id. at 417, 48 A.3d 242. As a result, we held that a defendant could challenge his pre-Stevenson conviction through a postconviction proceeding notwithstanding that the defendant did not object to advisory only jury instructions at trial. Id. at 391, 48 A.3d 242.
Just a few years later, we were asked in Waine to overrule Unger as a wrongful departure from principles of stare decisis , and to resurrect what was once the law under Stevenson ,Montgomery , and Adams. 444 Md. at 699, 122 A.3d 294. We held that Unger was rightly decided and that stare decisis in fact required us to adhere to it. Id. at 700–02, 122 A.3d 294. Recognizing that the constitutional standard set forth in Stevenson —that the jury is the judge of the law of the crime and the judge's remaining instructions on the law are binding—was a change in the law that must be applied retroactively; we further held, pertinent to the case now before us, that a motion to reopen based on Unger satisfied the “interests of justice” standard under the UPPA. Id. at 702–03, 122 A.3d 294 ; seeGray v. State , 388 Md. 366, 382–83 n.7, 879 A.2d 1064 2005) (concluding that, “[w]hile it is within the trial court's discretion to decide when ‘the interests of justice’ require reopening,” a “change made in the law that should be applied retroactively” satisfies this standard). We held finally, informed by Sullivan v. Louisiana , 508 U.S. 275, 281–82, 113 S.Ct. 2078, 124 L.Ed.2d 182 (1993), that an instruction that does not satisfy the new constitutional standard announced by Stevenson and Montgomery constitutes “structural error not susceptible to harmless error analysis.” Waine , 444 Md. at 705, 122 A.3d 294.
From this, we can discern that a petitioner whose conviction resulted from a trial in which the jury was given advisory only instructions is entitled to have his postconviction proceedings reopened because such clearly erroneous instructions implicate the petitioner's federal constitutional right to due process. To deny reopening a postconviction proceeding to a petitioner whose conviction rests upon an error of constitutional dimension not subject to a harmless error analysis would necessarily be an abuse of discretion as “well removed from any center mark imagined by the reviewing court and beyond the fringe of what the court deems minimally acceptable.” Gray , 388 Md. at 383, 879 A.2d 1064 (internal quotation marks omitted).
In 1978, Respondent, James Leslie Adams-Bey, Jr., was convicted by a jury of first degree rape and related offenses in the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County, and for those crimes he was sentenced to life plus ten years of incarceration. His convictions were affirmed by the Court of Special Appeals and this Court. Adams v. State , 43 Md.App. 528, 406 A.2d 637 (1979), aff'd , 289 Md. 221, 424 A.2d 344 (1981).
Respondent petitioned unsuccessfully for postconviction relief in 2010. On August 14, 2012, shortly after we had decided Unger , Respondent moved pro se to reopen his postconviction proceeding on the ground that the jurors at his criminal trial were given advisory only instructions in violation of his constitutional right to due process of law. Respondent argued that those instructions were unconstitutional because the jury was not instructed to follow the court's explanation of the law and the court did not inform the jury of the binding nature of its instructions on the State's burden of proof or the presumption of innocence. The trial court instructed the jury, in relevant part, as follows:
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Bodeau v. State
...that the court did err, we add a footnote to the "tortured history" of advisory-only instructions in Maryland. State v. Adams-Bey , 449 Md. 690, 695, 144 A.3d 1200 (2016). We address the extent to which a petitioner in Bodeau's situation can be said to have unreasonably delayed in challengi......
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In re J.J.
...determination. In the absence of such a provision, this Court cannot read this requirement into the statute. See State v. Adams–Bey , 449 Md. 690, 702, 144 A.3d 1200 (2016) (" 'We neither add nor delete words to a clear and unambiguous statute to give it a meaning not reflected by the words......
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Bodeau v. State
...that the court did err, we add a footnote to the "tortured history" of advisory-only instructions in Maryland. State v. Adams-Bey, 449 Md. 690, 695 (2016). We address the extent to which a petitioner in Bodeau's situation can be said to have unreasonably delayed in challenging his convictio......
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In re J.J., 5, Sept. Term, 2017
...452 Md. 255, 265, 156 A.3d 873 (2017) (quoting State v. Johnson , 415 Md. 413, 421, 2 A.3d 368 (2010) ); see also State v. Adams–Bey , 449 Md. 690, 702, 144 A.3d 1200 (2016) (declaring that this Court will not read words into a statute "to extend or limit the statute's meaning"). Where stat......